And quiet that splinters the winter had its UK premiere as part of the Sound / Image Festival 2025 in Greenwich.
The Organ Recital This site-specific installation, based on video derived from my own recent CT scan, was at Cable Depot, London in May 2024. It incorporated a multi-channel spatial composition for violin and low frequencies.
Click here for more info and to read Clive Bell's review in The Wire.
For this concert, I will be adapting the composition for violin and low frequencies I made for the installation and quiet that splinters the winter on the Amoenus immersive sound system at The Bath House in Hackney Wick, London. Tickets here.
I will be artist-in-residence at Cable Depot in London from the end of March to 12 April 2024, developing a new site-specific sound and video installation entitled The Organ Recital. The work is based on my own recent CT scan - the image to the left is of my body. The opening is 12 May from 2-5pm, and the exhibition will run 13-26 May (by appointment only).
In early 2024 I was aritst-in-residence at the renowned EMS Elektronmusikstudion Stockholm, where I spent most of my time in their largest studio, pictured here. This studio was designed by the same company that designed ABBA's famous Polar Studios in Stockholm. Here I experimented with materials and techniques for various projects, including The Organ Recital, to be installed in London in spring 1024.
And quiet that shatters the winter is a site-specific installation in collaboration with Denise Hawrysio in At Home Gallery, Slovakia. It uses video, sound and collage to address the brutal war in Ukraine and its tragic consequences both for people and the environment.
I was invited to be the first guest presenter for this great project initiated by Peter Hatch, composer and former director of the Open Ears Festival in Ontario. I composed and performed a new piece for violin and low frequencies, which I dedicated to my friend Graham Meisner, who died earlier in the year. My performance lecture took place at 4:33pm in the gorgeous Beaver Point Hall on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia in August 2023.
I have composed the soundtrack for Damnation, a new digital film by experimental San Francisco filmmaker Scott Stark. "A succession of guilty souls is viewed through a mysterious portal as they are dispatched to eternal damnation." It premiered at Anthology Film Archives, New York City, in November 2022.
See here for a review in Lake Ivan Film Review.
My new video installation, a posthumous collaboration with Tim Wainwright, will be showing in Stockholm from 1 Oct 2022 to 29 Jan 2023 as part of Life Eternal, an exhibition curated by the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm.
2022 Guggenheim Fellow Janis Crystal Lipzin commissioned me to compose the soundtrack for Ontogeny. The world premiere of this digital film was at the Crossroads Festival in San Francisco in August 2022.
An interview in the American journal TransplantNATION about the two projects I did with the late Tim Wainwright, working with transplant patients in two UK hospitals.
Study for Violin and Canada Goose was composed in 2021 for artist, researcher and curator Charlotte Hoechsmann's “loudl-oudl-ow” project: she commissioned audio works by 58 musicians / sound artists, each of whom was asked to make a piece based on a bird of their choice.
On Something is an online exhibition with MOCA London which unfolded incrementally in May 2021 as a series of 12 short Instagram videos.
I am the gigantic baobab, a film I made with Sara Davidmann and young members of the LGBTQ+ community in Botswana, is showing as part of the Strangelove Festival 2020.
Cats and Dogs is a live performance for violin and moving image created for online audiences during the Coronavirus lockdown in London.
My work was selected as part of SEAD Exemplars, a project of the Network for Sciences, Engineering, Arts and Design (SEAD). The SEAD curators gathered exemplary works "demonstrating effective intersections among the sciences and engineering with art, design, and humanities. The collection provides ample evidence ... of the positive impact that disciplinary integration can have in education, culture, and economic resurgence. Transplant and Life is an exemplar of how artists can provide a new human perspective to scientific and technological issues. The project changes the understanding of this life-changing and emotional medical procedure, engaging the general public while also being a valuable humanizing resource for both patients and clinicians."
My work with organ transplant patients is featured in an article entitled Increasing Awareness of Heart Transplantation Through Socially Engaged Art Practices in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (Vol 1, Issue 3, Oct 2019).
Birds I wouldnt have heard, a collaboration with the late Tim Wainwright, is based on our work with organ transplant patients. The installation, which includes a 90-minute video with surround sound, is part of the exhibition Spare Parts at Science Gallery London.
I'm saddened to write that the photographer with whom I have collaborated on several projects over many years, Tim Wainwright, passed away in London on November 21, 2018. He was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer a few months ago and accepted his fate with incredible grace and tranquility.
Noise Pollution in Hospitals, an article I co-authored with the rest of the HPNoSS team, is published in the British Medical Journal, one of the world's leading peer-reviewed medical research journals.
Anthropologist Dr Abin Thomas and I convened a panel called 'Organ transplantation and art: The ethics and politics of representation', at the 2018 Royal Anthropological Institute conference in London. This 3-hour double session included leading medical anthropologist Professor Lesley Sharp from Columbia University, as well as artists and social scientists from around the world. Lesley, Abin and I also participated in a workshop funded by the King’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, 'Laboratories of health: human and non-human subjects', at which I presented the HPNoSS project (see below).
My presentation at Re-thinking Sound 2018 in Seoul, South Korea, was called 'The Sound of Feelings: Voice, language and emotion in organ transplant patients'. I discussed my work-in-progress with linguist Professor Elena Semino and researcher in emotional psychology Dr Hedwig Eisenbarth, analysing and working with transcripts and recordings of transplant recipients.
Along with other members of the CRISAP Research Centre (Creative Practice in Sound Arts Practice), I was invited to provide tracks for a playlist on the Helicotrema website. My contribution consists of recordings from two of my site-specific installations for high and low frequencies. The pieces themselves were not partiuclarly loud, but because of the very high and very low frequencies, the better your sound system, the more you'll get from these recordings. But you won't get anything like the full effect of the installations without expensive tweeters and massive, club-scale woofers!
Caroline Bergvall invited me to compose sound for Oh My Oh My, for Documenta 14. This work for voice, trombone and field recordings was broadcast as part of the Documenta Radio programme Every Time A Ear di Soun, live streamed daily in Kassel, on the Documenta 14 website, broadcast on radio stations in 8 countriesl and later performed live at the South Bank in London.
Interdisciplinary workshop / symposium at King's College Hospital's simulation ward as part of HPNoSS (Hospital Project on Noise, Sound and Sleep), on which I am lead researcher.
Grave, a sculptural installation with metronone, video projection, miniature violin and feedback will show at the Wexford Arts Centre in Ireland in late 2017...
HAMMER | ANVIL | STIRRUP presents the work of Irish and international artists whose practice is concerned with sound - from composition, physics, and sculpture to noise, acousmatics, and listening. Works by David Beattie, Richard Carr, Edgardo Rudnitzky, John Wynne.
I am the lead creative researcher on HPNoSS (Hospital Project on Noise, Sound and Sleep). We have seed funding from the King's Cultural Institute, and I'm working with Professor Anne Marie Rafferty (Professor of Nursing Policy at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery), Dr Andreas Xyrichis (lecturer and researcher at the Florence Nightingale Faculty), Professor Angus Carlyle (Professor of Sound and Landscape at the University of the Arts London), and Dr Jamie Mackrill (Lecturer in Design Engineering at Imperial College London). We are looking at practical and creative ways of improving the patient experience in hospitals.
Presentation at the Sound of Memory symposium at Goldsmiths College, University of London 24 April 2017.
The Transplant and Life installation is reviewed for the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Medical Humanities Blog by Emma Barnard: "This exhibition is a poignant reminder that the objects contained within the glass jars of the Hunterian Museum are of human origin."
In conversation with Karen Taylor (rb&hArts) and Beth Elliott (Bethlem Gallery), discussing the Transplant and Life project in the library of the Royal College of Surgeons, London.
Click for a podcast of my discussion of the Transplant and Life project with host Mark Aitken, on There Then, Hear Now on Resonance FM. Includes several audio clips from the installation.
Along with linguist Dr Sam Hellmuth, I am a guest on Michael Rosen's Word of Mouth, BBC Radio 4's long-running series exploring "words and the way we use them". Our discussion about intonation and its relationship to music will be broadcast on February 14 at 4pm, repeated February 20 at 11pm. It will be available on the BBC iPlayer, and as a download.
Transplant and Life receives a glowing review in The Lancet, one of the world's leading medical journals...
"Surgery is considered by many to be the most closed of the medical professions. It may still have some work to do in catching up with the current desire for accountability and transparency. So, it is a real pleasure to see the Transplant and Life exhibition, at The Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS), espouse a sense of modernity and inclusiveness.
Claire Marx, the RCS's first female President, spoke feelingly at the launch of how proud she felt to have the testimony of patients put centre stage, within such hallowed walls, for the very first time. She is right to claim that this modest exhibition is 'the jewel in the crown' of what the RCS has to show." (Gabriel Weston, The Lancet, January 2017)
Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, London
22-11-2016 to 20-5-2017
An exhibition and programme of events exploring organ transplantation. Tim Wainwright and John Wynne use sound, photography and video to give voice to the patient experience in the context of the medical museum, a place normally associated with specimens, hardware, and clinical heroes. A digital guide enriches the experience for visitors and those not able to attend, providing access to additional images, sounds, and scientific and historical information.
I am currently artist-in-residence, along with photographer Tim Wainwright, at the Royal Free Hospital in London. In September 2016, we spent the night in an operating theatre with Consultant Surgeon Bimbi Fernando and his team as they prepared and transplanted two kidneys from a deceased donor. The visual and sonic materials we are collecting will be used for an exhibition / installation at the Hunterian Museum (Royal College of Surgeons) in London later in 2016.
Encountering PAIN: hearing, seeing, speaking
An international conference at University College London exploring a range of interdisciplinary approaches to help us better understand encounters with pain both within and beyond the clinic. My presentation, in collaboration with Tim Wainwright, is entitled "Pain and Renewal in Organ Transplantation".
I am keynote speaker at the Research and Innovation Conference on practice-based research at Southampton Solent University on May 20, 2016.
The image to the left is a study for the Anspayaxw project with speakers of the endangered indigenous language Gitxsanimaax in Kispiox, British Columbia.
The Patient explores the human experience of illness, disease and ultimately death. It opens at UNSW Galleries in Sydney in June, 2016, and will then tour Australia.
Curated by Rebecca Dean, the exhibition examines the representation of medical patients in contemporary art, and artists themselves as medical subjects, through works by 18 leading international artists.
Dean describes the exhibition as "fearless, funny, painfully beautiful and unlovely". The artists in this exhibition deepen our own enquiries into the actual stuff of illness and disease, death and life — how they manifest viscerally and psychologically as well as socially and politically.
Participating artists: Ingrid Bachmann (CAN), John A Douglas (AUS), Brenton Heath-Kerr (AUS), Carol Jerrems (AUS), Eugenie Lee (KOR/AUS), David McDiarmid (AUS), Helen Pynor (AUS/UK), Jo Spence (UK), ORLAN (FRA), John Wynne (CAN/UK), Tim Wainwright (AUS/UK), Bob Flanagan, Sheree Rose (USA), and Guy Ben-Ary (USA/AUS) w Nathan Thompson, Andrew Fitch, Douglas Bakkum, Stuart Hodgetts, Mike Edel.
Funding has just been confirmed for a large-scale installation in the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London (pictured here) in late 2016. The Hunterian hosts unrivalled collections of human and non-human anatomical and pathological specimens, models, instruments, painting and sculptures that reveal the art and science of surgery from the 17th century to the present day. Tim Wainwright and I will be artists-in-residency at the Royal Free Hospital in London, working with kindney and liver transplant recipients and live donors: the project will give voice to the patient experience within the medical museum, a place more commonly associated with specimens, hardware, and clinical heroes.
Making Conversations is a discussion between myself, Andrew Prescott (Professor of Digital Humanities at University of Glasgow and AHRC Fellow for Digital Transformations), and Mandana Seyfeddinipur (Director of the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme at SOAS). It was originally broadcast in London and worldwide on Resonance FM.
Grave, a sculptural installation using feedback at Gazelli Art House, London, 2015.
I'm pleased to announce the release of an updated version of the interactive app Hearing Voices: Speakers/Languages as a free download from ELP Publishing. It contains recordings and photographs, as well as interviews and information about the highly endangered Khoi and San 'click languages' I recorded in the Kalahari Desert, in collaboration with linguist Andy Chebanne and artist Denise Hawrysio.
Thanks to David Nathan for his perseverance in fixing bugs and making improvements in design and functionality. The original design was a collaboration with Rob Munro, and there's a foreword by David Toop. Also published by ELP is my article 'Hearing Voices: Research and creative practice across cultures and disciplines', in a special issue on Language Documentation and Archiving in the journal Language Documentation and Description (Vol 12).
Gaborone, Botswana, 2015. I was working with a colleague from the University of the Arts London, Sara Davidmann, and participants of a UNESCO project on gender and sexual identity in southern Africa. This photograph of us working with Katlego Kai Kolanyane-Kesupile (Kat) was taken by John McAllister, Botswana co-ordinator of the UNESCO project.
Transplant Log, our research blog for the Transplant project has been restored after a long absence due to technical problems. I was artist-in-residence for a year at Harefield Hospital, one of the world's leading centres for heart and lung transplants. Working closely with photographer Tim Wainwright, I recorded patients, the devices they were attached to or had implanted within their bodies, as well as staff and the environment of the hospital itself. On this site you will also find the video originally made for a DVD contained in the book, Transplant, edited by Victoria Hume.
Click here for more information on the project outcomes, which included an installation and an award-winning half hour radio commission for BBC Radio.
An excellent article on the Anspayaxw installation at Surrey Art Gallery in Canada's national newspaper by Jen Van Evra.
Anspayaxw, a 12-channel installation based on the endangered indigenous language Gitxsanimaax, is on at the Surrey Art Gallery until August 22, 2015.
Installation view of the untitled installation I developed during my research residency at the Gallery, University of Bournemouth in March 2015.
I am starting a residency in the University of Bournemouth Art Gallery on February 14. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know what I’m going to use to do it. My plan is to bring speakers that are only capable of reproducing very high and very low frequencies along with a mix of new and old technology (including my first computer, an Atari ST) and use these to make a work that takes as its starting point the existing ambient soundscape and visual architecture of the gallery but grows over time, like microbes in a petri dish, into something else.
Dubai TV news coverage of I Am Not the Cancer.
I Am Not the Cancer in Dubai, December 2014. Six plasma screens, six super-directional overhead speakers, two subwoofers. This is a video and sound installation based on women with advanced (metastatic) breast cancer. Developed in collaboration with photographer Tim Wainwright, different versions of the piece have shown in ten cities, including London, Athens, Brussels, Nicosia, Basel and Dubai.
I was interviewed by critic Morgan Quaintance on his show, Studio Visit, on Resonance FM. The programme is available on Morgan's website, where he also has archives of interviews with artists such as Carolee Schneemann and Jimmie Durham.
Everyday Listening asked me "Five sound questions"...
The Exponential Horn: In Search of Perfect Sound
14.00-16.30, Saturday 28 June 2014
An afternoon of new and historical works, including four world premieres made especially for reproduction through the historic Denman Horn, Britain's largest horn loudspeaker.
Featuring live music, sound, and moving image by John Wynne, Glyn Perrin, Michael Oliva, Jennifer Walshe, Simon Tyszko, Zbigniew Karkowski, Federico Reuben and Aleks Kolkowski. With a performance of John Cage’s Cartridge Music (1960) by Langham Research Centre.
Invitation to a panel discussion during my exhibtion at Gazelli Art House in London. The Flux, and I was a two-person show with Yoonjin Jung which closed at the end of June 2014. I showed two new installations, Installation no 3 for high and low frequencies and Architectural Sound Drawing no 3.
Click for an interview with me about the show.
This article on my work by Julian Cowley was published in MusicWorks magazine late in 2013. Click to see the full article.
21.01.14
Lecture at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) entitled 'Language Endangerment and Sound Art: Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Research Ethics'.
19.02.14
Lecture for the Documentary Research Forum at the London College of Communication entitled 'Documentation and Abstraction: Sound art and asymmetrical relationships in research'.
Participants on my sound walk, part of a day I spent with associates and guests of Open School East, a free art school in Hackney. OSE is "a study programme for 12 associate artists and a communal space housed in the old Rose Lipman Library in East London. Emphasizing cooperation and experimentation, the initiative is set up to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and skills between artists, local residents, neighbourhood organisations and the broader public."
Nocturnal, a collaborative installation with film maker Atom Egoyan. Commissioned by Aldeburgh music, this is a site specific installation using 17.4 channels of audio, video projection and a camera obscura mechanism to transfer the moving image from one space into another.
Anspyaxw, my 12-channel sound and still image installation made with speakers of the endangered indigenous language Gitxsanimaax, and with photos by Denise Hawrysio, is on at the Museum of Anthropology's Satellite Gallery in downtown Vancouver until October 26, 2013.
Session 3 of the symposium On Endangered Languages: Indigeneity, Community and Creative Practice at the UBC Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver. The symposium coincided with the opening of Anspayaxw at MoA's Satellite Gallery.
I am not the cancer, a collaborative sound and video installation with Tim Wainwright, in Brussels, 2013. This piece was made in collaboration with women with advanced/metastatic breast cancer in the UK, Netherlands and France. It was comprised of 6 HD plasma screens, 6 chairs, 6 hyper directional overhead speakers, and 2 subwoofers.
What is What, in collaboration with Denise Hawrysio at Frise Künstlerhaus in Hamburg. HD plasma screen with carton and packing materials, DVD, 2.1 sound system.
Invitation to the exhibition What is What at Frise Künstlerhaus in Hamburg, Germany.
Cold Atlantic, a small sculptural installation developed from my earlier work with my late father's hearing aids, is showing at the Justina M Barnicke Gallery in Toronto from Jan 16 – Mar 10, 2013.
Volume: Hear Here is curated by Christof Migone. Artists: Alexis O'Hara, Dave Dyment, Darsha Hewitt, John Oswald, Ian Skedd, Charles Stankeviech, Mitchell Akiyama, crys cole, Marla Hlady, Neil Klassen, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, David Lieberman, Sylvia Matas, David Merritt, Ryan Park, Juliana Pivato, Alexandre St-Onge, Chiyoko Szlavnics, John Wynne.
Anspayaxw, a 12-channel sound and photography installation, showed in late 2012 as a solo exhibition in San Francisco. Curated by Ethnographic Terminalia as part of Audible Observatories, the event was in conjunction with the American Anthropological Association's conference, where I was also on a panel with Steven Feld, Rupert Cox and others. The recordings and photographs were made in collaboration with Denise Hawrysio and linguist Tyler Peterson. The installation is scheduled to show next in September 2013 at the UBC Museum of Anthropology's Satellite Gallery in downtown Vancouver.
Faster Higher Stronger is a short video which developed from an earlier installation of the same name. It makes use of graphic subversions of the Olympic rings and reflects the endless hype that accompanies the Games around the world.
I have been nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Sound Design / Composition for my work on director Graham McLaren's production of Andromache for Necessary Angel Theatre Company in Toronto. Also nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Female in a Principal Role is Christine Horne, pictured here.
Installation no 2 for high and low frequencies. Site-specific installation at Angus-Hughes Gallery in London. In Frieze Magazine, Daniela Cascella writes...
"This work appears as the physical projection of an otherwise concealed, yet primary force that underlies the activity of listening – not only spatially but also culturally and temporally.... And yet this is not a demonstration of acoustic laws: it puts each listener in a heightened relationship with the aural phenomena and inevitably – like all the forms of sound-making focused on the environment, on the passing and reverberations of time – it prompts deep considerations on how we relate to what moves us and in spite of us; to the shape of what we hear, to how this shape changes and melts with the everyday, how it anchors each listener to the here and now of their listening. Rooted in timeless physical laws, this work nonetheless gains resonance in the contingent, changing laws of individual perception." (Daniela Cascella, Frieze Magazine)
Invitation to the solo exhibition at Angus-Hughes Gallery, London.
The Transplant video (in collaboration with Tim Wainwright) was installed as part of this extensive survey show of sound art at the ZKM Institute in Karlsruhe, Germany.
A new audio work based on environmental recordings I made in and around the Gitxsan reserve at Kispiox, British Columbia, will be part of the Sounds (Extra)Ordinary exhibition organised by The Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax, Canada. The show opens February 1 and all the works will also be broadcast on CKDU FM and other stations across Canada. Works by: John Abram (CAN), Audio Lodge (CAN), Laura Cameron and Matt Rogalsky (CAN), Marla Hlady (CAN), Francisco López (ESP), Rachel Woolmore-Goodwin (CAN), John Wynne (UK/CAN).
I was recently commissioned to make a new radio piece based on some of the materials from my work with speakers of the endangered indigenous language Gitxsanimaax in northern British Columbia. The True Language will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday January 31 during a programme called Short Cuts, which starts at 3pm. The theme of this episode is Lost for Words.
Aleks Kolkowski recorded my installation Beating Tones and Flapping Wings last year on a wax cylinder. Here is the recording: the installation is barely audible, but the recording is all the more intriguing as a result.
Detail of my recent site-specific Installation no 1 for high and low frequencies in the exhibition Air I Breathe, curated by Mila Askarova.
As well as commissioning the large site-specific installation above, curator Mila Askarova of Gazelli Art House also invited me to show this piece, Hearing Loss, originally made in 2006.
I have two pieces in this group show in London, a new installation plus Hearing Loss, a piece from a few years ago. Also in the show are Little Whitehead, Kate Terry and Yoonjin Jung. Air I Breathe is curated by Mila Askarov for Gazelli Art House.
I was Head of Jury for an interesting (and possibly unique) "soundscape composition contest" in the city of Joensuu in Finland. The 9 shortlisted works were played on a 100 speaker sound system permanently installed in a pedestrianized zone of the city.
I'm somewhat cynical about competitions - I think it means something if you win, assuming the judges have been attentive and conscientious, but it often means very little if you don't win. We probably missed some work which would have sounded great on the street, but we couldn't hear all 143 entries on the public system, so many entries had to be eliminted on the basis of hearing them in the studio rather than outside. Entries came from all over the world, but we were unanimous in awarding first place to a piece made by a local artist.
This 'enhanced audio CD' has just been released on the Sub Rosa label. It's also available through Antenne Books in the UK and Art Metropole in Canada. Contains an Audio CD (a 45-minute recording of the installation), Bouncing off the Walls (a split-screen time-lapse video by Pete Gomes), and 'An Aesthetics of Pressure', an essay by Brandon LaBelle.
I don’t consider myself a ‘theatre person’, but I was approached to do the sound design for a production of Racine’s Andromache by Scottish director Graham McLaren, who is known for his challenging adaptations of the classics. I liked his open, experimental approach, so I took it on, and working with Graham and the cast for Necessary Angel in Toronto turned out to be a joy. The image is of Arsinée Khanjian as Andromache.
NOW Magazine:
John Wynne's sound design and Andrea Lundy's stark lighting grip us in fear as we sit on all four sides of a square that could be a military barracks, common area or interrogation room somewhere in a Middle East war zone.
The Torontoist:
The language, set, costumes and sound design (a barely noticeable, persistent, low throbbing that at points builds into the sound of a jet overhead) results in one of the most successful modern adaptations we've seen in recent memory.
The Globe and Mail:
You might come away from this Andromache seeing it as a scathing commentary on shallow western values. You will come away knowing you've seen a thrilling reinterpretation of a classic.
Anspayaxw, a 12-channel sound and photography installation, has just opened at the 'Ksan Museum gallery in Hazelton, British Columbia. The museum is in Gitxsan territory near the Kispiox reserve where the recordings and photographs were made in collaboration with Denise Hawrysio and linguist Tyler Peterson. Runs until October 31, 2011.
A symposium about auditory spatial awareness and the perception of sound in architectural space to mark the release of an enhanced audio CD of my installation for 300 speakers, Pianola and vacuum cleaner.
March 23, Podium Lecture Theatre, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London
Hugh Huddy (writer and accessibility expert at the Royal National Institute of Blind People), Paul Bavister (BFLS Architects and The Bartlett School of Architecture), Ross Brown (Central School of Speech and Drama), John Wynne (Reader in Sound Art, UAL), plus a site-specific performance by Bob (Ruth) Levene.
An hour-long talk at Clocks and Clouds, presented by In the Dark, an organisation dedicated to curating, commissioning and discussing challenging works for radio involving spoken word. March 5, 2011.
ITU, the surround sound video made by Tim Wainwright and myself, is showing on February 7th at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin as part of Liminality, a programme devised by artist and physician Ciara McMahon. Tim and I will participate in a discussion on the work on the 7th, and Transplant, the video published with our book, will show on February 9th.
Accepting the award for Sonic Art at the British Composer Awards 2010 from Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of the South Bank Centre in London. The judges described Installation for 300 speakers, Pianola and vacuum cleaner as "aurally and visually mesmerising, involving a resonant and enigmatic sound world. A highly structured composition with a visual impact."
Listen to BBC Radio 3's coverage of the awards... 
Mexican art magazine Taxi has reviewed the Newspeak show at the Saatchi Gallery which featured the 300 speaker installation. Apparently, I have "achieved international reverberation with this exhibition". Click here for the article.
Installation for 300 speakers, player piano and vacuum cleaner
This show at The Saatchi Gallery has now closed.
With John Wynne’s untitled installation of 300 speakers, amplifiers and other impedimenta I have no doubt that I am in the presence of a work of art. I do not pretend to understand it. I know only that, alone in Gallery 10 where the ceiling is exceptionally high, these grey, brown and black bits and pieces of our technological lives combine in an odd grace as they climb the walls in one corner. They recall, and trounce, Rachel Whiteread’s failure with white plastic boxes in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern and Anish Kapoor’s red-wax-in-the-corner cannon piece in the RA, but Wynne’s profound sense of order makes their disorder and haphazardry seem ridiculous.
— Brian Sewell, The Evening Standard
Cage would have enjoyed this. The most disconcerting thing, however, is a long length of vacuum-cleaner hose that snakes from a doorway and between the speakers to the pianola. The hose quivers, writhes and slithers about, as a hidden Hoover powers the pianola. It's like sharing the room with an awakening python.
— Adrian Searle, The Guardian
Beating Tones and Flapping Wings was a two-part installation at Wilton's Music Hall in London commissioned for the Cut and Splice Festival and made in collaboration with Denise Hawrysio. Click on the image for a short video clip. Click here for more information and the publication Cut & Splice: Transmission.
... John Wynne‘s deft installation exploring the aural illusion known as the Shepard Phenomenon, as well as a book of interviews and essays edited by Sound Threshold‘s Daniela Cascella and Lucia Farinati and designed in the style of photocopied electronics manual, added to the impression of Cut & Splice as a celebration of inventiveness, interference and hands-on sonic practice, as well as a conduit for radio’s more mysterious qualities.
— Frances Morgan, Frieze Magazine
Anspayaxw is a 12-channel installation with phtographs by Denise Hawrysio shown at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver during Border Zones: New Art Across Cultures. The work will travel to other galleries in Canada in 2011/12. The exhibition catalogue includes an insightful essay by Kate Hennessey entitled Asymmetrical Translations: The art of John Wynne.
See below for an interview about this work...
An interview about the Anspayaxw project made by the Museum of Anthropology.
Hearts, Lungs and Minds, a half-hour composed documentary for radio was broadcast for the second time on BBC Radio 3 in December 2009. This piece, which won the Bronze Award a the Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago, is based on recordings made with Tim Wainwright while we were artists in residence at Harefield Hospital, one of the world's leading centres for heart and lung transplants.
See below for an interview about the Transplant project.
Click left for a short video about the Transplant project featuring interviews with John Wynne and Tim Waiwright on StaticTV.
Faster Higher Stronger is a 5-channel installation which makes use of publicly visible graphic subversions of the Olympic rings gathered from various sources. It was exhibited in Sound Proof 2, a recent exhibtion in London about the Olympics curated by Monica Biagioli.